Thursday, April 12, 2012

Well, actually it did, and this is another example of the usefulness of willful stupidity. Doug Cotton, yes bunnies, the peer reviewed Doug Cotton, making silly over at Roy's, and given how silly Royhas become, that is indeed very silly indeed.

Roy is trying to ignore him, but to slightly paraphrase a comment from the NY Times blogs The Dougs constitute our major problem: how do we improve our understanding of the world, maintain constructive relationships with the rest of the world, and move forward into a better future when a substantial segment of our population (who vote!) are guided by absurd beliefs. The Roys are not evil, simply shortsighted. They don't understand that this dog will hunt only until it gets hungry; then it will turn around in a rage and bite us all.

Eli, of course, dipped an ear in, but that lead to some thinking. Let Doug state his ansatz (which, btw, you can find many other places on the web, not just from Doug

So, can we find an example of EM radiation not being converted to thermal energy when we might expect it to be?

A microwave oven can warm items with water molecules in them, including liquid water. This does not violate the SLoT simply because energy is added using electricity. But it can only melt ice by conduction from adjacent water molecules that it has already warmed, not by direct action on the ice.

However, the process is nothing remotely like the normal natural absorption of sunlight which also warms water and melts ice.

Not all photons striking water or ice molecules automatically convert EM energy to thermal energy as happens with solar radiation. If they did (as some people imply they do because they assume there is two-way heat flow which results in an apparent net one way flow) then why does far less energy flow into ice in a microwave oven than into water?

So what happens, Roy, to the fairly high intensity, but low frequency microwave radiation which strikes the ice cubes in a microwave oven but does not melt them?
If not much is reflected off water, why would much be reflected off ice? We know ice melts in front of an electric radiator. So the difference is in the frequency distribution as Claes and I have been saying.

It is neither reflected much nor absorbed at all. Yet, being a solid, not much would be transmitted, especially when we know the same microwaves had an effect on water.
So it must be scattered in the way I describe in my paper, and the absorptivity of ice for such low frequency radiation must be zero, because the ice does not melt. The reasons are in my paper, and this is why IPCC models are wrong in assuming absorptivity > 0 for backradiation.

WHich is more intense? Radiation in a microwave oven or backradiation from above the poles? Both types of radiation have lower frequencies than the radiation emitted by the ice itself.

If high intensity LW radiation in a microwave oven cannot melt ice, what chance does low intensity LW backradiation have of melting (or warming) all the ice and snow-covered areas of the globe? How then can backradiation affect sea levels?

The simple answer, of course, is that the absorption coefficient of solids varies with wavelength. The figure on the right, from RefractiveIndex. Info (a great site for looking up refractive indicies of materials, highly recommended) shows the extinction coefficient of hexagonal ice. The absorbance is quite high throughout the thermal IR (say from about 6 to 100 microns. At the peak of the CO2 bending vibration, about 14 microns the extinction coefficient is 0.28 cm-1 which is equivalent to an absorption coefficient of 2500 cm-1. That's really high. An absorption coefficient of 1 cm-1 means that 90% of the light would be absorbed in 1 cm, so the IR from backradiation is pretty much absorbed on the surface of the ice and someone should to tell Doug (right, good luck).
But yeah, microwave ovens don't heat ice very well, most of what you see is the absorption of the thin water layer on the top (getting rid of which 100% is a huge bear). The question is why, and the answer can be found in a really impressive paper by Warren and Brandt published in JGR 113 D 14220 (2008) which has indicies of refraction, real and imaginary parts, for ice across the ENTIRE spectrum, and yes, water ice has a minimum in the absorption right where most kitchen microwaves work, 122 mm.

16 comments:

Wow, Eli, you should really warn a guy before he steps into a pile of flaming stupid.

So, here's my question: How do idiots like Dr. Jaybird and Doug notknow they're stupid? Hell, not only do they not think they're stupid, they think they're doing science!

Were they homeshooled by indulgent parents? Are they secretly the love children of Kim Il Sung who grew up with poor peasants begging to smell their sh*t at the point of a bayonet? Was it all some cruel practical joke by a sadistic father? As in: "(sotto voce) Watch this. (calling out) Doug, why don't you show father Calhoun how you've disproved Einstein's theory of relativity. (snicker, snicker)"

Maybe that's what we get with an educational system that worries more about self esteem than competence.

Hmmm. I am overcome by the desire to perform an experiment with ice dosed with something that absorbs microwaves. But I am not sure I am willing to sacrifice a microwave oven to prove that I am more physics deficient than Doug.

I also read the Claes article after Andrew mentioned it. Seems Claes does not believe in Quantum Theory. So he used the Planck black body, derived from Quantum Theory, and made up some nonsense about thresholds in an attempt to do away with quantum theory.

"Copper — the stuff of pennies and tea kettles — is also one of the few metals that can turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels with relatively little energy. When fashioned into an electrode and stimulated with voltage, copper acts as a strong catalyst, setting off an electrochemical reaction with carbon dioxide that reduces the greenhouse gas to methane or methanol.

Various researchers around the world have studied copper’s potential as an energy-efficient means of recycling carbon dioxide emissions in powerplants: Instead of being released into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide would be circulated through a copper catalyst and turned into methane — which could then power the rest of the plant. Such a self-energizing system could vastly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired and natural-gas-powered plants."

“You normally have to put a lot of energy into converting carbon dioxide into something useful,” says Hamad-Schifferli, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and biological engineering. “We demonstrated hybrid copper-gold nanoparticles are much more stable, and have the potential to lower the energy you need for the reaction.”

OK then, let me see; ALL we have to do is burn carbon (coal) or methane to make CO2 and water and recover energy. Then with this new process we combine CO2 and water to make methane, which we then burn to recover more energy.

Doug Cotton, is the extremist who shares a locked psych ward with the guys who say heat travels thru a vacuum. Doug is however relatively quite well mannered, and is more of a fanatic than a terrorist.

"So, here's my question: How do idiots like Dr. Jaybird and Doug notknow they're stupid? Hell, not only do they not think they're stupid, they think they're doing science!"

ho ho, I have been waiting since Intelligence Squared to see your savior Gavin Schmidt in action. Maybe he needs to take speech classes like James Hansen the next time he goes up against Richard Lindzen.

Gee, Jaybird, last I say, you were doubling down on posts. I can tell you're nervous about the way things are going 'cause you get all "whistlin' in the graveyard" loquacious.

Gonna lie for Jebus some more?

Oh, and Jaybird, when are you gonna learn to tell the difference between opinions of NASA and those of scientists exercising their rights of free speech? Too subtle a point for you, you little turd fondler?

Another brilliant work of science and the properties of matter in the real world versus the 'JayCad' "heads in the sand FUD", the 'AJ' "Imaginary/Alchemy Contradiction Science" and the usual 'WUWT/RoyS' "I got bats-in-the-belfry version".

Ah, the wonders of edumakation, it always dispels the myths of "Idiocracy" every time! ;)

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they occasionally heed his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.